Gramer Girl here, I'm Minion Focardy.

This week I have a quick and dirty tip about how to remember the difference between cavalry

and cavalry.

And because it's B week, I have a meeting middle with all sorts of fascinating history

and tidbits about the script's national spelling B.

Last week I mentioned that the definition of the word troop often includes something

about it being a unit of cavalry, and I had to re-record that part quite a few times

because I kept mispronouncing it as Calvary.

The word for troops who ride horses is cavalry.

You can trace its origin back to the Latin word Kabbalarius, or maybe Kabbalarius, not

quite sure how to pronounce that.

But the word meant horsemen, and it's also one origin of the word chivalry.

Calvary is the name of a holy site in Christianity.

It's the name of the hill where Jesus is believed to have been crucified.

Big difference.

About the only way I can seem to get myself to pronounce cavalry right is to think of

the word cavalier first and sort of set my brain on the cav-a part.

Although today we're most likely to use cavalier as an adjective to describe someone who's

hotty or disdainful, it was used earlier as a noun to describe a horsemen, especially

one who was a soldier.

A man in the cavalry was called a cavalier, much the same way that someone who works in

finance is called a financier, and someone who climbs mountains can be called a mountaineer.

...